There Goes the Neighborhood

by Jade Adia

Genres: YA Contemporary

Synopsis

A raised fist against the destructive forces of gentrification and a love letter to communities of color everywhere, Jade Adia's unforgettable debut tells the darkly hilarious story of three best friends willing to do whatever it takes to stay together.

The gang is fake, but the fear is real.

Rhea's neighborhood is fading away—the mom-and-pop shops of her childhood forced out to make space for an artisanal kombucha brewery here, a hot yoga studio there. And everywhere, the feeling that this place is no longer meant for her. Because while their little corner of South L.A. isn't perfect, to Rhea and her two best friends, it's something even more important—it's home. And it's worth protecting.

But as more white people flock to their latest edgy, urban paradise for its cheap rent and sparkling new Whole Foods, more of Rhea's friends and family are pushed out. Until Rhea decides it's time to push back. Armed with their cellphones and a bag of firecrackers, the friends manipulate social media to create the illusion of gang violence in their neighborhood. All Rhea wanted to do was protect her community. Her friends. Herself. No one was supposed to get hurt. No one was supposed to die.

But is anyone ever really safe when you're fighting power with fear?

 

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Release date: March 7, 2023

Publisher: Disney Hyperion

Print pages: 432

Sample

PART one

“Swear to god if this happens again, I’m gunna scream.” I pull  my forehead back from the glass and use my fist to wipe away  the condensation.

“Yeah, I’ll walk straight to the mayor’s mansion, and he  better be ready to catch these hands,” Zeke says. He forms  two fists and throws a couple of fake punches in the air.

Malachi laughs, gripping the number on his classic Kobe  jersey. “Bruh, you’re not gunna fight anyone.”

This much is obvious to me and anyone who knows Zeke.  The boy once told me that he could never imagine himself fighting someone, unless it was in space and he had a  lightsaber.

“Okay, fine,” Zeke relents. “But I will send a strongly  worded email. And write a bad Yelp review.”

“I don’t think you can write Yelp reviews for the City of Los  Angeles,” I mumble. It’s only July 1, but when I try to count  up the number of mom-and-pop shops to bite it this summer  alone, I give up after ten. Jugos Azteca was the last place in  the neighborhood where you could still get a giant thirty-two ounce Styrofoam cup of agua fresca at any hour for only $2.

But now it’s gone too.

The global spice mart was the first to go. Some corporate stooges bought it last year and turned it into a boutique  Pilates studio. And the Liquor Bank where we used to buy  sour belts and chile mango pops? That was shut down for a  health code violation, and now there’s an artisan coffee shop  where you can paint a ceramic mug while you wait. Last year,  someone took over the fish fry restaurant next to that, and  now there’s a g* taco shop run by a couple of white  boys, and their only salsa option is pico de gallo. Pico-de f*-gallo. Not a bottle of Valentina or Yucateco in sight.  Not even any Tapatio or weak-a* Cholula. We went there  once to see what the deal was, but between the three of us,

we only had enough cash for one taco to split. When the corny  dude brought it over to us, we asked for hot sauce and he  gave us SRIRACHA. F* outta here with that ketchup sh*.  That would never have happened back in the day.

So yeah, things in South LA are changing, to say the least. “We could walk on Western Avenue until we find the elote  guy?” I suggest, more so as an excuse to get as far away as  possible from this depressing-a* empty storefront than out  of an actual craving for street corn.

“Rhea, it’s too hot to walk. Like Mad Max slash Dune slash  that Star Trek episode when Kirk fights that desert lizard  level hot.” Zeke uses the seam of his graphic tee to wipe a  line of sweat from underneath his sheepdog haircut.

“Well, unless you magically learn to drive, I don’t know  what our other option is,” I say. I’m usually the one good for  thinking of the plan for the day, but between the heat and yet  another spot biting the dust, I got nothing.

“When I get my permit, I’ll be charging y’all for rides,”  Malachi says proudly.

“Boy, please.” I bop the back of his head. “As if you can  even buy a car.” At fifteen, the three of us can barely afford  snacks, let alone a whole-a* vehicle.

The sun kicks it up a notch. Trippy waves of gas rising  from the steaming concrete do a little dance for me before  melting away. Across the street, something catches my eye. If  this looks like what I think it does . . . I fight the urge to gag.

“Wait, guys, hold up,” I say, holding a hand above my eyes  to block out the sun.

For the past six months, the city’s been building this high speed Metro rail to slice through our neighborhood. The construction site is almost always empty, but today, it looks like  there’s a “special” new addition.

Cars honk as I dodge traffic, but I couldn’t care less. When  I hit the other side of the street, I lace my fingers around the  wire of the chain link fence to get a better look. You’ve got to be kidding me. 

Zeke catches up and puts on his CNN newscaster voice to  read the brand-new billboard staring at us. “Kofa Park: Los  Angeles’s Newest Up-and-Coming Hot Spot!”

I roll my eyes. “Gimme your backpack,” I say to Malachi. “Why?” He pulls the straps of his space-themed JanSport  close to his chest.

“You don’t trust me?”

“H* no!” He backs away all dramatic at first, but there’s a  faint trace of a smile beneath it all. I lunge forward to snatch  it but miss. He laughs and tosses me the backpack.

I snag a Sharpie from the front pocket. “Watch out for a  security guard, aight?” I dig the rubber toes of my Converse  into the gaps of the fence and climb over. My shoes hit the  concrete with a sting.

The marker squeaks as I rub its felt tip against the  Plexiglas. The future train stop shelter has two side panels, so I hit those real quick before focusing on the backside,  which is the most important because this is what faces the  street.

This is the sh* that people see.

We’ve had bull* billboards like this popping up all over  South LA for the past couple of years, so normally I wouldn’t  have even noticed. But something about this particular one  caught my eye:

All the people in the ads are white.

Well, at least they were until a minute ago.

I use the brown Sharpie to fill in one last face.

The guys hop the fence to join me on the forbidden side.  Malachi with his long legs does so much easier than Zeke,  who sort of half scrambles, half falls his way over.

The hood of the train stop structure casts a thin strip of  futile shade covering only half of the metal bench, which by  now has already absorbed hours’ worth of summer heat, so  it’s way too hot to sit on. But that doesn’t stop Zeke from trying. Twice.

“Rheaaaa,” Zeke complains to me after burning his a*  once again. He rubs the seat of his jeans. “Can you just let  this go?”

“No.” As a Black girl, I know how sh* works: we’re either  hypervisible or invisible. I’m not gonna pretend that I personally don’t fall in that second category, but I don’t need a  g* billboard rubbing it in my face. Let alone erasing  the entire hood into obscurity along with me.

My hand cramps and I accidentally color outside of  the line.

“I’m too young and too cute to get a rap for breaking and  entering,” Zeke complains.

On the other side of the fence, a white twentysomething  woman with a cat on a bedazzled leash crosses the street to  avoid walking past us. She clutches her phone all dramatic,  the panic button locked and loaded as if we’ve been lurking  here waiting to mug her. She avoids my eye contact as I stare  her down.

Apparently, we don’t look very young to her.

I ignore Zeke and keep coloring. He groans and grabs  the cluster of neon-yellow caution tape from the floor, walking over to Malachi. Even while leaning against the fence,  Malachi towers over Zeke, so Zeke has to rise up on his toes  to wrap the “Do Not Enter” tape around Malachi’s neck. Zeke  arranges the makeshift boa and smiles. “You look fabulous.”

“Y’all play too much,” Malachi says, hiding a smirk. He  adjusts the caution tape scarf and takes the wave brush from  the back pocket of his jeans, compulsively rubbing it across  his head, fresh from the barber with a new fade. The new cut  works for him. A little too well. I’ve seen the way that other  girls have started to look at him this summer. He’s all height,  glowing brown skin, and perfect teeth since the braces came  off. Not like that’s any of my business—how other girls look  at him, I mean. As his oldest friend, I try not to notice the  changes. Plus, it’s not like I’ve glowed up in any way to match.

Zeke, Malachi, and I have been best friends since Pampers.  Our moms became tight when they’d volunteer at our day  care together. As we got older, that turned into waiting for us  at the bus stop after school, which was always late because  we’d mess with the driver so much that he’d have to pull over  to yell at us to stay in our seats and sh*. So our moms had

plenty of time to bond and gossip about the other parents.  Eventually, the three of us became accustomed to impromptu  playdates on the patch of grass at the street corner while our  moms kept raising their gelled nails at us, telling us to chill  out for “five more minutes.” And let me tell you, when Black  and Latina moms get into full-on chisme mode, you know  for d* sure that they ain’t gonna be just “five minutes.”

So, Zeke, Malachi, and I leaned into our crew. We gradually  transitioned from school friends, to bus friends, to friends friends.

These days, my mom doesn’t hang out with the others  anymore. Or anyone, really, except her newest husband.  Even I didn’t make the cut. So Zeke and Malachi aren’t just  my best friends, they’re my tethers—the ones who keep me  from feeling like I could drift away at any moment without  anyone noticing, the ones who make me feel at home in the  world. Not like I’d ever straight up tell Zeke’s sentimental a* or Malachi’s smug self how much they mean to me, but what ever, they know. And the fact that they ride-or-die so hard  with me, hopping a fence to watch my back, no questions  asked, means it’s mutual.

“Incoming security guard.” Malachi tilts forward like he’s  ready to bolt. Little diamond-shaped impressions run down  his spine where he had been leaning against the fence. “You  done yet?”

“Nah, hold on.” The guys hover over my shoulders, but I  cover my work. “I said I’m not done yet.”

Malachi sucks his teeth. “C’mon, let us see.”

“It’s not finished.”

“Sis, relax,” Zeke says. He swats away my hand and takes  a sharp inhale.

Malachi doubles over in laughter. “They look like they’re  in blackface!”

“No, they don’t!” I protest. I take a step back but realize  that they low-key do.

Not my best work. 

“This somehow feels even more racist than the original ad,”  Zeke cackles.

“Ay, yo, STOP!” On the opposite side of the track, a skinny  security guard pulls up on some bootleg Mall Cop bull*.  He leans over the handlebars of his bicycle, but his helmet is  slightly too big, so it sags to the side, making him look even  younger than he is. I recognize him because he works the  night shift at Wing Stop. It’s probably just in my head, but  swear to god, I can smell the lemon pepper seasoning lingering on his uniform from over here.

“The penalties for a conviction of misdemeanor graffiti are  up to 364 days in county jail, a $1,000 fine, or both,” the  guard shouts, tryna make his voice big. The dark skin of his  chicken legs glisten with sweat and cocoa butter.

“And what’s the penalty for rockin’ shorts that tight on a  Wednesday afternoon?” Malachi clowns as he hops the fence  back to the street. I take the moment of distraction to add my  final touch: I scratch out the “newest up-and-coming” part of  the ad.

“You know what?” The skinny guard whips out his busted  Android with a screen crack deeper than the San Andreas  fault. “Names and addresses! I got y’all on tape!”

With that, Zeke and I catapult ourselves over the fence.  I kick out a kink in my leg from the fall as we watch the  goofy Mall Cop n* round the corner, pedaling straight  toward us.

Malachi’s big brown eyes go wide as he claps in my face.  “Yo, let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”

We sprint by the men in suits who hand out copies of the  local paper every afternoon and the mural of the dark woman  whose afro holds a spaceship above the words “Free Your  Mind.” A group of girls, maybe four or five years younger than  us, Double Dutch in the empty parking lot where a woman  selling tamales laughs with a customer who hangs out of their  car window, delicately grasping a plastic bag steaming from  the heat of the corn husks. I can smell the masa even after  we dip into the alley, leaping over empty boxes of backwoods  and lost wads of braiding hair from the salon above the black and-gray-style tattoo parlor.

Our sprint slows to a jog, which slows to a walk. We  emerge on the other end and lose the guard at last. “Your bad attitude is gunna screw us all over,” Malachi  says between deep gasps for breath. “I’m cutting off your  Sharpie supply, Rhea.”

Recently, there’s been something about the way he says  my name that makes my stomach do a slow somersault. I  clock the feeling but push it aside. “Whatever, bighead,” I  reply, knocking my sandal against his Jordans, but being  careful not to scuff them up.

The heat catches up to us, so we practically crawl the final  two blocks to Zeke’s apartment, which is where we hang most  of the time because his mom, Lupe, keeps the fridge stocked  with h* snacks. Within minutes of piling inside, the three  of us are arguing over who gets the last cheese-and-loroco  pupusa when Lupe comes in.

She’s crying.

“Ma?” Zeke asks softly, relinquishing the tiny bowl of curtido that he had been threatening to withhold if we didn’t share  with him.

“Can you get this out of the way, please?” she asks me,  pointing at a chair that we had knocked over earlier. I stand  and move it to its proper place at the table so that she can  move her wheelchair around our mess. We all stare at the  open envelope and crinkled letter lying facedown in her lap,

but none of us dare to ask about it. She shuts her bedroom  door gently and Zeke sinks back down onto the carpet. “What do you think that’s about?” Zeke asks, clenching his  hands together.

“I don’t know.” I tread carefully, because Zeke’s one of  those real sensitive, empathetic guys. He’s the type who’ll get  choked up by those corny commercials where someone earns  their degree from an online university and their kids try on  the graduation cap. When things get dark for real, he can  fall apart easily. I never really cry on my own, but with Zeke,  his tears are annoyingly infectious. Once he gets started, it’s  Game Over for me—straight kryptonite. Unlike Zeke, though,  I’d rather keep the feels to a minimum, so I throw myself into  ‘Operation: Zeke Cry Prevention’ at all costs.

“Do you think it’s health stuff?” Malachi asks cautiously.  Zeke’s mom has been some type of sick for practically our  entire lives. A few years ago, though, her nervous system  stopped working well, which made it hard for her to walk,  until eventually, she couldn’t walk at all. The doctors never  figured out exactly what happened, but she’s been able to  manage with the chair and hasn’t been to the hospital in over  a year.

Lupe has one of those wild, uninhibited laughs that makes  it easy to forget that she’s often in pain.

“Nah, man. She was at the doctor last week and everything was chill. They spent most of the appointment talking  about how the doc’s bratty son ruined his niece’s quince photo  shoot.”

“How’d he ruin the photo shoot?” Malachi asks. I flick the  side of his head to remind him to focus on the actual issue  at hand.

From behind her closed door, Lupe calls out to us. “Why  don’t you all go to Malachi’s house? I need a bit of space to  work this afternoon.” Lupe is the part-time billing manager  for a semiretired dentist, so she’s always contacting some one’s insurance or returning a patient’s phone call.

“Sure, no problem,” we reply in unison, though the chorus  of our voices comes out more apprehensive than eager. Malachi and I get up, but Zeke’s still glued to the floor.  I reach out my hand. “Just give her a minute, it’s probably  nothing,” I whisper. He grabs my wrist and I pull him up,  careful not to knock over the collection of porcelain crosses  on the bookshelf behind me.

Zeke locks the door behind us as Malachi and I attempt  to see who can jump high enough to touch the hallway ceiling. I’m centimeters away from swiping the stucco above our  heads when a familiar voice yells at us from down the hall.

“Cut that sh* out!” 

“Not this a* again,” Malachi murmurs.

Right on cue, Vic comes waddling down the hall. He’s one  of those short, pudgy white dudes who’s thicc with lower body  curves honestly not unlike my grandma.

“Here comes the Evil Landlord and his signature body odor  fragrance . . .” I say to the guys. We cackle, which only makes  Vic more pissed.

“Hahaha laugh all you want, cretins. In thirty days, I’ll be  the one laughing.” He haphazardly waves a scroll of paper at  our faces like a fire extinguisher. “I’ll never have to see you  three spilling Arizonas and stomping all over my units ever  again.”

“’Cause you’re gunna kill us?” I chime in with a devious grin.

“As much pleasure as that would give me, no. I won’t have  to. Didn’t you hear the news?” He runs his french-fry-grease soaked hands across his mouth and nods at Zeke. “Acne ridden wannabe Carlos Vives over here is moving.” Vic makes  his pale fingers into the shape of a gun and pretends to fire it  at Zeke’s chest.

“What are you talking about? We’re not moving,” Zeke  pipes back.

Oil mixed with sweat glistens above the self-satisfied grin  smeared across Vic’s face. “Oh yeah? So, you’re saying that you  personally have the money to afford the sixty percent increase  in rent then?” A fly buzzes through the hallway, filling the  silence that falls between us. Vic moves to swat it. He misses.

Look, I don’t know how much the rent is, but I got an A in  math last year—a 60 percent increase is no joke. “You see this?” Vic theatrically unrolls the scroll that he’s  been wielding and reveals a set of blueprints. “The sh*  that you’re standing in now—which was run into the ground  by all of your people—will soon be renovated. Out with the old  tenants, and in with the new ones.” I’ve seen enough changes  on the block recently to know what he means. Read: millennials with tech jobs and hipsters with trust funds. “And this  apartment complex”—he knocks on the wall—“is going to  house them.”

“You can’t do that!” Zeke shouts. His voice cracks in a  way that under different circumstances would have been fair  game for ridicule. “We’re under rent control.”

“News flash: the rent control ordinance expired, kiddo.  And I’ve already got an investor lined up. We’re expected to  close the deal by the end of the month. Now, if you’ll excuse  me.” Vic pushes past a stunned Zeke to start taping notices of  eviction to each of the doors.

Nuh-uh, f* that. First they close our shops, now they’re  full-on tryna displace us? I throw my arm in front of the door  that Vic is preparing to plaster. “Do you really think you can  get away with this?” The rage that’s been building inside of  me all afternoon, all summer, pops off. I knock the stack of  eviction notices from his grimy hand. “Well, go ahead. Try it.  I f* dare you.” I get all up in Vic’s space, so close that I  can feel his soggy fast-food breath soak the air between us.  I lower my voice to a cold whisper. “Because guess what?  When all this sh* passes, we’ll be the ones left standing . . .  not you.”

His beady eyes narrow. “Is that a threat?”

I cross my arms. “It’s the truth.”

Vic sneers and gathers the papers from the floor. “Thirty  days. That’s all you got.”

“Is that a challenge?” I clap back.

I stare Vic down and he stares right back. No matter  where Zeke moves, there’s no way he’d stay nearby—not with  prices surging across the city. He could end up all the way out  in the valley or even the Inland Empire, both of which are far  as h*. Moving out there is practically like going out of state— we’d never see Zeke.

I break away to look over at Zeke, who’s glued to his door,

mist gathering over his eyes. I grab his wrist and pull him  down the hallway with Malachi while the ghost of Vic’s sick  laughter bounces off the concrete walls against our backs.

“Change is inevitable, kids. Better get used to it now.” The door slams and we’re left standing outside, looking in. “To Live and Die in LA . . .” Zeke says, eyes red. “That was  the plan.”

I clench my fists until the knuckles crack. Our crew is not  falling apart. Not like this, not on my watch, not ever. We have to stop him.

“It still is.”